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Chapter 15

                                     Go Big or Go Home

  A massive explosion rocked the Syren. Will fought to keep his footing. If it hadn't been for the stateroom doorknob, he might have ended up in the water.

  One of the defending ships closest to them had taken a fatal hit to the powder stores. Now there were two burning sections of hull sinking into the relatively shallow Bay. The metallic tang of black powder and blood blossomed out behind the shockwave.

  He heard something heavy sliding down the slope of the tilted deck. Whatever it was, it sounded like overly polished boots scraping on deck planks. It sounded desperate and defeated at the same time. It sounded like it was cursing.

  Cesar hit him, nearly ripping his grip away from the door. Will’s other hand scrambled for purchase on the smooth door frame and he managed to keep them both from tumbling into the wreckage strewn Bay.

  “I take back everything I said about you, cripple,” Cesar panted, blissfully ironic. ”I owe you one.”

  The ship righted itself with a shivering groan and a sloshing splash. The two men stood slowly holding each other up until the world stopped moving around them.

  Cesar squinted at Will's hand, still on the doorknob. “Wait…did I run into you just as you were about to sneak into our cabin?

  “I'm not sneaking, and it's not your cabin. It's Sarah's, you…you know what? Never mind. There's way bigger fish to fry right now.”

  Will released his white knuckled hold on the door and turned to face Cesar. One hand reached toward the sound of labored breathing until it collided with the other man's chest and twisted up a fistful of brass buttons and ruffled collar.

  “You have been bullying your way around this ship since the day you got here, pissing everybody off, and basically just getting in the way. I don't know what Sarah sees in you, but if you really want to be worthy of her patience… listen carefully to what I'm about to say!”

  Cesar tried to yank his coat out of the blind man's hand, but his grip was surprisingly strong. “Who are you?” A note of panic slipped into his voice. His recent humiliation was painfully fresh in his mind and posterior. “I do not take orders from a beggar on my own ship.”

  Shockingly, the ‘beggar’ slapped him with the back of his free hand. A sharp tang of blood dribbled into his mouth from his split lip. He froze, unable to process this latest indignity.

  “I am Will Nonce. Before the monster in Sarah's cabin trapped my soul, I was First Mate of this ship and friend of her captain. I can help you, maybe, fix some of the blunders that have been pouring off your miserable hide. Now shut up and listen.” His voice carried the note of command, honed to a razor sharp edge by years of practice.

  Something shifted in Cesar’s face. The bravado cracked. He looked back with blank eyes and nodded.

  “Good man.“

  Cesar’s shoulders squared. His expression shifted—from beaten to leadable.

  “The two that came onboard just as we shoved off, you remember them?” Will let go of the coat, hands dropped to his sides. Fingers flexing in thought.

  “Of course, weird couple of birds.”

  “It's worse than that. He's a demon named Thresh. Chain Warden. Jailor of souls. I don't know what she is. Can't be good though.” The Syren’s gun deck roared a broadside at an enemy frigate. “They want Sarah. I can't hear her voice though. We can't rush in and put her at risk.”

  Cesar blinked twice. “Umm, she's not in there. She's on deck, running the battle. She actually sent me to… check on you.” The look on his face said, ‘don't ask’.

  "She called you three in. Thresh and Dania went in after her.” He shook his head and muttered, “I don't understand.”

  “Do you have a plan or don't you, cri…Will?” Cesar was shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Sarah is in battle.  We could be helping.”

  “There's something in there Thresh wants. It can't be good for her or this ship if he gets it.” Will, still thinking out loud, fumbled for the door again. “There’s no time. Cesar! Look at me. Focus. Are you looking at me?”

  “Yes..yes, of course,” Cesar lied. There was pale mist coming from under the door and frost slowly creeping up the frame. “Are you sure they went in there? You are blind, maybe you were mistaken.”

  Will’s eyelids closed self-consciously. He imagined how unnerving his sightless stare must be.

“I can’t see, but I can hear. Better than most. They are in there. I’m going in. Nothing you know is going to help in this fight, only your grit and the strength of your soul. Are you with me or are only going to look out for yourself…again?”

  Cesar hesitated, pulled himself up to his full 5-foot 11-inch height. Looked back at the battle raging on the sea around them. Time slowed. Splintering crack of cannonball impacts. Nostril-burning fumes. Eye watering flashes. The air even tasted of desperate effort. Sarah shouting orders and pulling men to their feet, turned her head. Their eyes meet.

  “She's watching.” The thought is stamped on his face in bold letters. He turned to the to ice encrusted door and shouldered past Will.

  “What are you waiting for, old man? An invitation?”

  His shoulder hit the door. Ice shattered into a thousand stinging shards. Cesar stumbled a bit as he pulled Will behind him into the cabin–a frostbitten nightmare enveloped them.

Chapter 16

                                            Sacrifice

  Sarah watched Cesar smash through her door and yank the blind deckhand roughly behind him.

  “Holy hells! I leave that bastard alone for 10 minutes and he’s already back to assaulting my crew?” She knelt beside a gunner’s mate, stunned by an exploding shell. A round of chain-shot spun through the space where her head had just been.

  “Karma is alive and well it seems,” she thought. The thop-thop-thop of spinning death passing overhead sounded disappointed. “But I’m not waiting for karma. This stops now.”

  She stood up, gently pulling the lad to his feet. The ship rocked, a close call to the port sending salty spray across the deck. She absorbed the motion with practiced ease and pushed the mate back to his gun with a small salute.

  Against every instinct, she turned her back on the gun battle. The Noxians assault had stalled. The flaming wrecks dotting the harbor made navigation a challenge and a concentrated push, impossible. Her crew could handle it while she cleaned house. “For the last time,”  she promised herself.

  As she neared the entrance to her stateroom, she reached to check her twin pistols, and stopped short. “Damn it!” she cursed out loud. “I haven’t even had time to grab them off the wall, since I got back.”

  “Oh, well. I don’t want to shoot that clown anyway,” her thoughts turned from gunpowder to something more hands on. Fists clenched, she strode forward. With all the smoke and debris in the air, the tendrils of mist curling out of the open door didn’t even register.

  Cold slapped her physically as she passed from the hazy sunlit deck to the interior space. “Cesar Embustante! What in the Blessed Isles do you think…” Her voice trailed off as her eyes adjusted to the dimly lit room. It would have been funny if it wasn’t clear that life and death, or worse, was at stake.

  Master Erlok had found the plain cask hiding the two remaining artifacts. The illusion of humanity was gone. In its place, an inhuman grinning skull wreathed in green fire focused on the figurine of the barren tree clenched in his fist.

  The woman that had boarded ship with him stood close, straining, both her hands wrapped around the wrist holding the figure. Hoarfrost streamed out from their locked arms. Nothing was untouched by its icy exhalation. Her face was a study in contradictions. Straining, desperate and jubilant at the same time.

  Cesar was rising from where he had fallen as he crashed through the door. The ice layer was worse on the deck planking and footing was treacherous. He reached out to the blind seaman and they struggled to their feet together.

  “I might have misread the situation a tad…” Miss Fortune thought. Shock and Awe hung from the wall, impossibly out of reach, on the other side of the struggling pair. “That’s unfortunate.”

  The fiery green spirit bellowed at the woman, “It is MINE!” A massive hook connected to a thick chain snapped through the wintery air, striking her repeatedly. It might have been an iron mosquito attacking a glacier. A metallic ringing, with each strike, the only proof of the force it carried..

  “No! I need it! Aye! The cold… I can feel it! I can actually feel it.” She hissed between words, surrendering zero ground even as the frost climbed up her arms. “Give it to me! The curse shrinks from its touch.”

  One of the large bay windows on the back wall shattered from the thermal imbalance. The sounds of splintering beams spread with the progress of the frozen zone around them.

  “If I don’t stop them, they’ll break my ship apart like an ice cube under a steel hammer.”

  She picked up one of the finely carved wooden chairs in front of the captain’s desk and raised it above her head, intending to smash it down on the artifact at the center of the struggle. The cold was slowing her movements and the chair felt unnaturally heavy.

  The green demon finally reacted to her threat and the hook reoriented on Sarah. It sang across the cabin. She brought the chair down defensively and the tethered missile smashed into it. Splinters peppered her cheeks. She cried out as she lost her footing on the slick floor. Her back hit the deck, the wind left her lungs.

  “Sarah? Is that you?”

  “Why is the blind man calling me by my first name?” The disoriented thought swam through the fog. “I need help here, you two!”

  The drone of the hook swinging in a tight circle spiked her adrenaline, she fought to raise what was left of the chair to block again. The hook flew.

  “NO!” The blind man launched himself in between the deadly weapon and Sarah. It buried itself soundlessly in his chest. He hung there, arms outstretched, for a heartbeat. The monster grinned and yanked on the chain. A ghostly image of a man jerked out of the sailor’s rags. It wasn’t the same man though. As the rags dropped to the ground empty, the phantom turned to face her.

  “Will…?” Her heart stopped. His form started to unravel like a snagged sweater. Two final gifts for his former captain, a salute and a bittersweet smile, then his essence merged with the cold mist.

  “That salute was the one he always gave me after every victory.”

  An animal cry clawed out of her throat, raw from breathing in subzero temperatures. In a single movement, she lifted the chair and jumped to the side of the oak desk. The tortured wood came down on the frozen statuette and sent everything on the desk flying, including the tiny tree figure.

  Dania whimpered and dropped to the deck, scrambling to recapture it. Thresh growled, never breaking eye contact with Sarah while reeling in his chain.  Cesar blinked twice, mind bombarded by one impossible thing after another.

  Sarah, looking for options, called his name, “Cesar, what are you doing back there, honey?” Sarcasm sharpened the sting of the question.

  Something rolled against his foot. He looked down to find a gold ring worked in the shape of a crown. “Wow. That looks valuable. I should pick it up.” His brain was scrambled, but that part still worked.

  It fit perfectly on his finger, and it felt…amazing. Like no one would ever tell him “No” again. For any reason.

  Thresh had fully retrieved his chain and hook. He tossed it from one hand to the other, grinned again, prepared to strike. And then grunted and looked down. Thick ice already claimed his legs and creeped upwards, to his waist, then shoulders.

   Dania crawled out from under the desk, holding the Winter Tree in front of her, pointing at her former ally. Arcane energies swirled out from it, encircling the remaining bits of him, freezing him solid.  “It… is… mine! You will never take it from me!”

  Sarah vaulted the desk, put her shoulder against the chunk of ice and shoved. It slid across the slick, frozen decking and tumbled out the broken window, into the sea. She spun on her heel, scanning for Dania and stepping towards her beloved brace of guns. “What the hell?”

  The other woman was looking at Cesar, transfixed. “So, beautiful and…warm,” she mumbled, taking a hesitant step toward him. “Are you warm, beautiful man?”

  Cesar held both arms stretched out in front, fingers splayed. A new ring sparkled around his right thumb.

  “Now, now. Nice ice lady. Stay back.” He stepped back himself.  “Sarah? I think I found your ring. Come take it back, please.”

  He started to take the ring off. The second it cleared the tip of his finger, Dania screwed up her eyes and snarled. Mystic vines of icy mist shot toward him. He slammed the ring back on his thumb.

  “Yes. So handsome, and warm.” Dania reached his side and threw her arms around his neck. “Mine…” she whispered.

  A chuckle bubbled out of Sarah's gaping mouth and quickly blossomed into her signature laugh. “This danger seems to be contained. Karma is indeed a bitch.”

Epilogue

                                 There Was a Will, There Was a Way

       The remains of the Noxian fleet were finished off rapidly. Cesar's new ‘sweetheart’ was more than happy to freeze the ocean around any ship he asked her to. Unable to bring their guns to bear, the invaders were surrounded, one by one, and sunk. A few enemy sailors asked for mercy and were taken ashore to be assessed. Ten ships surrendered unconditionally and would replace ships lost in the defense.

       “I don't understand why I can't give this cursed ring to someone else!” Cesar whined loudly. Dania walked at his side, arm locked with his possessively.

       Captain Fortune, in full dress uniform, smirked at him. “Two reasons. One, because at least this way you can actually be useful, and… Two, if you try to take the ring off, even for a second, Dania will turn you into an iceberg. Thank God the ring only seems to work on one person at a time.”

       They stepped up to the ship’s railing where a flag-draped coffin rested on a plank hanging over the gentle waves of the outer Bilgewater Bay.

       “Quit complaining. Today isn't about you.” She signaled the gunners to begin the funeral salute. “Besides, you make a cute couple.”

       Her heart ached with every loud report of the deck cannons. “It turns out that it's so much harder to lose a friend twice.” She turned her back to the assembled guests and pretended to straighten her Tricorn hat. A quick swipe from her gloved hands dried a couple of stray tears.

       “Why should I say words to these people that I should have said to you, my friend?” The image of that last salute played behind her eyes. “Will you hear them, wherever you are?”

       The last gun sounds. It echoes off the distant shoreline seconds later.

       She raises Will Nonce’s saber and cuts the rope that holds the plank in place. She's already on her way back to her cabin before the box hits the water.

       “I have to believe that last smile meant that your heart already knew my answer.”

In honor of the wild, beautiful chaos that was Star Guardian Academy. It was the birthplace of this story. May it rest in peace.